Normal tissue develops, and is maintained by, processes of cell division and cell death. Diseases associated with increased cell division include cancer and atherosclerosis. It is commonly observed in treating cancers, that initial treatments, such as with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, are effective to destroy significant numbers of tumor cells, only to leave behind a small number of tumor cells that are resistant to the treatment, which then multiply to form newly detected tumors that are increasingly resistant to treatment as new rounds of therapy are tried. The growing popularity of “cocktails” of chemotherapy drugs has given rise to multidrug resistant (“MDR”) tumor cells, which are ever more difficult to destroy. Drug sensitive tumor cells, under the selective pressure of treatment with drugs, develop into drug resistant versions of the same tumor cell type. Drug resistance, either acquired or inherent, is the leading cause of death in cancer.
Methods for dealing with MDR tumor cells have been proposed, but without practical, clear clinical success at entirely eliminating such cells and providing a cure for patients with MDR tumors. For example, in Lampdis and Priebe U.S. Pat. No. 6,670,330, entitled: “Cancer Chemotherapy with 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose,” incorporated herein in its entirety by reference, a class of glycolytic inhibitors are described for use in combination with standard chemotherapy protocols in treating solid tumors by attacking anaerobic cells a the center of the tumor. In Pizer, Townsend and Kuhajda U.S. Patent Publication No. 20020187534, published Dec. 12, 2002, entitled: “Treating cancer by increasing intracellular malonyl CoA levels,” incorporated herein in its entirety by reference, fatty acid metabolism is manipulated by inhibition of carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1, for example with etomoxir.